We are in Russia!!!

Well, after a long journey we have made it to St. Petersburg, Russia!

For the most part our trip went well. We left Pittsburgh about 20 minutes late because our plane had to be de-iced (thanks to mother nature dropping some more snow on us Saturday morning) but we made it to Chicago just fine. Jimmy (O'Rourke family friend) picked us up at the airport and we met Chris (one of John's sisters), Brynn and Marin (2 of our nieces) for lunch. We had a very nice visit before returning to the airport to wait for the long flight to Germany.

We took off on time for Frankfurt, Germany and that flight went smoothly. We had TV screens on the seats in front of us so we were able to watch a couple of movies to help pass the time. We landed in Frankfurt with only about 45 minutes until our flight to St. Petersburg was to take off. We arrived at our gate to hear that the flight was delayed for 15-20 minutes due to snowy weather in Frankfurt (our plane had to be de-iced there as well after we boarded - we ended up being an hour late ariving in St. Petersburg). During our wait, we struck up a conversation with a couple who happened to be from Columbus, Ohio. They were on their way to St. Petersburg for their adoption court date. They made their first visit in December and are adopting 2 little boys (brothers ages 5 & 3). We were able to ask them many questions and they were extremely helpful. When we arrived in St. Petersburg they led us to Passport Check and we exchanged email addresses to keep in touch :)

Once we received our bags, we met our driver (Sasha) and we quickly learned that he knows very limited English. He called Natasha, our agency's employee in St. Petersburg, and we were able to speak to her about our plans for Monday (and he was able to figure out which hotel to take us to). On our drive to the hotel, Sasha pointed out many things to us but it was often in Russian or his attempt at English. The temperature is similar to home (at least today) and there is snow here but not as much as at home. We checked into the hotel (it's an American hotel so they speak English thank goodness!) and are now just hanging out in our room. We weren't able to get comfortable enough to get a lot of sleep on the planes - only about 2 hours each. So, we have gone almost 28 hours with only 2 hours of sleep (and we left our house after only 5 hours of sleep Friday night) - we are a bit tired needless to say :)

Our appointment tomorrow is at 2:00pm (6:00am at home) with the Ministry of Education to receive our "referral". Once that is over, we will travel to the baby home. We will first meet with the Director of the home to ask her any questions we have about him (we have lots!) and then we will finally get to meet him!